Up to 20 of Hodgson’s players could be involved in those two fixtures five days before England face Moldova at Wembley on Sep 6.

They then travel to Ukraine for the key Sept 10 tie. At the very least, Hodgson’s opening training sessions at St George’s Park will be disrupted as players recover.

The Premier League told Hodgson and Football Association officials that there would have been huge complexities involved in tweaking the fixture computer to guarantee avoiding such games.

It reminded Hodgson that it already had to factor in Premier League and Football League clubs from the same regions not being at home on the same day, policing capacity and policing requests (such as no matches in Merseyside on Grand National day and avoiding games near party political conferences).

Hodgson found support from Gary Lineker, the former England striker. “Onus now on Sky and BT Sport to do the right thing and leave the games on Saturday,’’ Lineker wrote on Twitter. “Time to put nation’s interests before their own.”

BT Sport stressed on Thursday night that they would not move any matches to the Sunday, but Sky have yet to declare their intentions.

A BT statement said: “(Our) Premier League weekend matches will normally kick-off at 12:45 on a Saturday – we can move games to a Sunday but will certainly not do that on this weekend as we understand the importance of the extra time for the England players prior to their crucial World Cup qualifiers.

The North London derby is sure to be on the Sunday as Spurs have a Europa League qualifier the preceding Thursday.

Lineker added: “Seems many of you no longer care about the national team. Is this really the case? I guess this justifies the Premier League’s disregard for the best interests of England?”

The elite division argued with the FA about who decides which matches are more exhausting, saying it was simply following Fifa statutes in releasing players on the Sunday evening and emphasised it was not alone in often hosting major games on the Sunday before Friday night World Cup qualifiers.

Last season, one of the El Clásico duels was staged five days before Spain’s away match in Belarus on Oct 12. Spain won 4-0 in Minsk.